God’s Prophetic Timeline
Christmas 2024 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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WELCOME & ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Christmas Caroling was awesome.
We had around 20 people come
We had a great time of fellowship afterwards
This Tuesday is our Candlelight Christmas Eve Service
This will take the place of our Wed Bible study
We will have light refreshments afterwards,
Please make plans to attend and bring a friend!
INTRODUCTION:
INTRODUCTION:
Part of preaching is strengthening the disciples. And much of our strength is rooted in our faith. That is what this little Christmas series is about. Its purpose is to strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ.
QUESTION: How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah? The majority of Jews certainly do not believe it. Do we take the written testimonies of the apostles alone? NO
ANSWER: The OT prophecies written, recorded, and preserved by God give us specific details so that we may know without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, and all of the OT prophecies about the coming Messiah point to him.
Last week we talked about who the Messiah will be from Isaiah chapter 9: He will be a Man, born as Child, given to us as a Son, yet He will be called Mighty God. We learned last week that this coming Savior of the world would be fully man and fully God, born of a virgin. This is who Israel was to look for as the coming Savior.
Today we will move forward about 200 years to the book of Daniel and study the prophetic timeline of world history and we will learn when Jesus is expected to come. Daniel is another OT prophet like Isaiah, and Gabriel himself visits him in response to his prayer to give specific details about the future and more specifically about when Jesus is coming.
We will be in Daniel chapter 9, which is found towards the end of the OT right after Ezekiel and before the minor prophet Hosea.
Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. He gave me instruction and talked with me and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. “At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.
Explanation:
Gabriel is our Christmas angel
He is the same angel who brought the message to Mary 500 years later that she would be the one to give birth to Jesus
Luke asked me the other day if Mary had a mother. I said of course she did! She was an ordinary person just like you and I! She sinned just like us, needed God’s grace just like us, and was chosen for this special role, and God’s messenger to her was Gabriel
What was Gabriel coming to give Daniel? INSIGHT! “I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding”
Context: Daniel has been praying and asking God to forgive the sins of his people Israel. God made a covenant with Israel, Israel broke the covenant, and as a result were carried off to Babylon as slaves for a period of seventy years. That is where Daniel is now. He is in Babylon, has been since he was a very young man, most likely in his 80’s now and he is praying for God’s forgiveness and to free Israel and restore Jerusalem.
God doesn’t respond with setting Israel free (just yet), He sends Gabriel with insight to give to Daniel so that Daniel will understand God’s prophetic timeline.
What is insight?
Insight is the ability to see deeply within a given situation or vision to understand it. In this context, Daniel saw a vision, and he did not understand what he was seeing, so Gabriel was sent by God to give him understanding of the vision.
Once again, God doesn’t directly give Daniel what he is asking for, He gives Daniel INSIGHT INTO GOD’s PROPHETIC TIMELINE
Bridge:
God has a plan, that is one thing that is certainly seen in this passage, and He also has a timeline of that plan. Biblical Events are planned, people are planned, all laid out to come to pass in certain periods of history according to God’s timing.
You and I are on God’s timeline. He saved us each at the exact time according to His purpose. He placed us in this specific age for a specific purpose.
Much of God’s timeline is fixed. That is, it is going to happen the exact way God says it is going to happen when God says it is going to happen.
Application:
1) God’s people need to ask for insight into His unfolding plan
1) God’s people need to ask for insight into His unfolding plan
Much of our frustration and difficulty in our Christian walk is because we lack the ability to below the surface of what God is doing
We look at things from a surface perspective, a worldly understanding
We see pain as only pain
We see waiting as only frustration
We see blessings only as when good things come into our lives
We see the surface of things when in reality we need to ask God for the ability to see deeply
Why?
Because it allows us to see God’s will for our lives.
It allows us to live our lives in alignment with God’s unfolding plan.
Daniel prayed for action: Dan 9:19
“O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”
But what God gave Daniel was insight to understand.
What I am saying is that our prayers should include the request for insight into the current circumstances of our lives.
We should be asking not only for God to move, but for God to give us understanding.
I cant imagine how much comfort this brought to Daniel to just know 1) that God has a plan and has not forgotten His people, but 2) that God would certainly set them free when the time was right.
2) THE PRECISION OF GOD’S TIMELINE
2) THE PRECISION OF GOD’S TIMELINE
“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.
Explanation: This is the prophecy, some even call “the backbone of all prophecy” of WHEN the Messiah will come. And like many prophecies in Scripture, there is some great difficulty interpreting this one. So lets take it one step at a time:
“from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks”
Gabriel is saying two things here: 1) that there will be a decree coming that will free Israel from captivity and restore Jerusalem. There were actually a few of these decrees, but this did happen and another temple was built. 2) there will be a period of 69 weeks in betwen this decree and the coming of the Messiah into the world.
The word “week” in my translation actually means “a period of seven” in the original Hebrew. The NIV translation makes this distinction and says there will be (seven ‘sevens’ and sixty two ‘sevens’). The period of sevens could refer to a period of seven days, but that is not what it means in these verses. In these verses it means a group of seven years. So if we take 69 (periods of 7 years) and do the multiplication we come up 483 years. That is what Gabriel says here: from the time of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem there will be 483 years until the Messiah comes.
Now the question is which decree is Gabriel talking about?
I think it is the decree given to Ezra in 458 BC
I have issued a decree that any of the people of Israel and their priests and the Levites in my kingdom who are willing to go to Jerusalem, may go with you.
If we take the 458 year which the decree was made and subtract the 483 years that was prophesied=, it will put us at 25 AD. We have to add 1 year for the transition from BC to AD which will put us at 26 AD which is precisely when Jesus was baptized and began his ministry and would have been publicly declared as the the promised Messiah.
What does this mean? It means that God did exactly what He told Daniel that He would do, when it was the time for it to happen.
Why did God not send Jesus earlier? Why wait 483 years before he would come. Why not do it in Daniel’s lifetime? Why not send Him while Abraham was still alive, or Jacob, or King David?
Because the timing of Jesus was absolutely perfect and no other time would have yielded a better result:
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
The Bible says that Jesus came at the perfect time.
It was the perfect time because every part of God’s plan would culminate at that time.
Every prophecy that was written would be fulfilled at that time
That was the time when even the hardness of God’s people would be used by God and hang Jesus on the cross which was also essential to God’s plan.
Everything on God’s timeline is about timing!
Application:
And to us it is a reminder to trust in God’s timing…God is far more concerned with timing than He is with time. nAnd we are far more concerned with time than we are with timing.
Time is a struggle for us. We are constantly in fear of running out of time and then to think waiting on God to come through is wasting time and we need to take matters into our own hands.
Principle: God is Lord over the clock. Time isn’t a concern to Him. It is about the pieces of His plan coming together at the precise time to bring about the greatest result.
One of the most foolish things we can do is take timing into our own hands. And try to force things to happen or bail out on God’s plan because it is taking too long.
The insight we do not have is what God is doing all around us in the waiting.
What God may be working out all around us is unknown to us and we are only aware of what God is doing in our lives.
Time is nothing to God. 2 Peter 3:8 “that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”
God can add years to a life and God can take them away. God is the Author of time, stands outside of time.
But timing is everything. And the wisest thing we can do is trust in God’s timing.
Chuck Swindoll taught a series through the book of Revelation not too long ago about the same time we went through it. And I got to listen to a couple of the messages.
One of them was on the two witnesses in heard a couple of the messages, and one was a message on the two witnesses in chapter 11.
He believed there would be a literal fulfillment of two witnesses who will bear testimony to God. And the point He made was that these two witnesses had just been there, come out of no where and are used mightily by God in accordance with God’s timing.
That is often the way God works. He has us to wait, and wait and wait, until one day when the time is right God moves in ways we could have never imagined.
Trust in God’s timing
3) THE NEXT PROPHETIC EVENT ON GOD’S TIMELINE
3) THE NEXT PROPHETIC EVENT ON GOD’S TIMELINE
“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
Explanation: Everything is sounding good and hopeful until we reach verse 26 that tells us the hope of all of Israel, the coming Messiah will be cut off and have nothing. And then it gets worse, the city and even sanctuary will be destroyed.
The Messiah being cut off is talking about His death on the cross. Jesus would not come and live forever on earth and reign over Israel. God’s plan has much more to it than that.
God has a much greater concern than our earthly comfort we often are seeking. Through the cross, God dealt with man’s greatest problem which is our sin and made salvation available to all the world.
BUT then comes More bad news: The city and sanctuary that Daniel had prayed to be restored would be destroyed again.
In 70 AD the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. It’s just as Jesus said it would be to the disciples:
Matthew 24:2 “not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.””
Then we come to another “week” (period of seven) in verse 27 that becomes even more difficult to interpret.
People have all sorts o of thought about when this is, but it seems best to see it as an end time event because this prophecy includes this phrase: “on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate”
If you have studied Matthew much it will sound familiar because Jesus quoted this verse when speaking of the end times
“Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
This abomination was something that has been repeated in history, but will be ultimately fulfilled during the tribulation period. Following the 7 years of tribulation, Jesus says He will return after this to gather together His elect.
Bridge:
Christmas is not just about looking back at the birth of Jesus, but it is also about looking forward to Jesus’ second coming.
Daniel’s great hope, word of comfort was that the Messiah certainly would come, not in his life time or for another 4 centuries, but He would come.
We do not have a time line of when Jesus will return. What we do have is a promise, just like God promised to send Him the first time, fully man and fully God, born of a virgin, this promise is that He will return again and this time He will be called Lord of lord’s and King of kings.
Application:
The gap in God’s timeline is the church age in which we live. It is the age of salvation. This is the time in God history of he earth when Jews, Gentiles, every color race language, anyone upon the earth can be saved from their sins by turning from their sins and trusting God with their lives.
It is so simple we are tempted to believe that it isn’t real, yet it is so profound that those who do begin to trust Jesus wonder if they will even make it. But the good news is it does not depend upon our might or merit. We become faithful because God makes us faithful. And we are faithful to the end because it is God who causes us to stand until the end.
CONCLUSION:
CONCLUSION:
I want to close with a couple things for us to think as we think about God’s timeline this Christmas Season:
Prayer
Christmas should be a time of intercession for others. Daniel prayed for God to forgive His people. Daniel prayed for God to forgive him, even if they were unwilling to pray themselves. And that is a model for us to follow. We should be lifting people up to the throne on a regular basis asking God to save them and forgive their sins.
And I would encourage you to pray for people specifically by name not a general prayer to save the world. We should pray for our family members, our friends, and those in the church who are struggling.
Christmas is not always an easy time for people. some deal with great loss and the holidays bring that pain back into their lives. We need to pray for those and be there for those who are struggling
Don’t waste your life with less important things that one day will not matter
Our lives are measured out on God’s timeline. That is, He has ordained a number of days we each have on this earth. We only have a certain number of Christmas’, we only have a certain number of years with our children, and we only have a certain number of opportunities to be used by God.
It is so easy to waste away the years either by working, or doing nothing, or missing everything important for the sake of a something much less important. One thing about time is that we never get it back, once it’s gone it is gone.
I would ask you to consider this as most important for your life:
Your relationship with God. You will never regret the time you spend with God or serving God. Time used for God is never wasted or regretted!
I spent many hours studying this passage to prepare to preach today but during that entire time I never felt like I wasted one second. My soul was at perfect peace digging and digging trying to gain understanding and coming to a conclusion that I could preach confidently this morning.
And when we go out and share the gospel this afternoon, I will not regret one second or feel like I wasted one second of the time God has given me. It was time well spent.
Time with God is never wasted time.
~PRAYER~
